Tag: Search Engines

Several years after Google launched Google Instant, they are killing the default search feature to bring search more inline with mobile devices.

After launching Google Instant – Google’s method of showing search results as you type them – several years ago, Google has removed the feature from search effective today.

Google Instant launched in 2010 under the leadership of Marissa Mayer. Mayer called this change a “fundamental shift in search” and the news was covered across all major media when it launched.

Now with the changes in how searchers use mobile – and over 50% of all Google searches being on mobile – Google decided to do away with this feature. A Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land:

We launched Google Instant back in 2010 with the goal to provide users with the information they need as quickly as possible, even as they typed their searches on desktop devices. Since then, many more of our searches happen on mobile, with very different input and interaction and screen constraints. With this in mind, we have decided to remove Google Instant, so we can focus on ways to make Search even faster and more fluid on all devices.

Now as you type, you will only see search suggestions and then be able to click on those suggestions to see the results. The search results will not load any result pages without clicking on a search suggestion or clicking enter.

Again, this change is to make search “more fluid on all devices” Google says.

Hoaxy is a new search engine designed to help reporters, researchers and the general public find information on the spread of unverified news stories.

Researchers at Indiana University have developed a search engine designed to explore the means in which fake news is spread. The engine, appropriately named Hoaxy, is a joint project between the University and the Center of Complex Networks and Systems Research.

Using web crawlers – bots designed to automatically scroll through and identify specific types of web content – Hoaxy finds fake news articles that line up with links that appear on independent, third-party fact-checker sites like factcheck.org and Snopes.com. An API then scans the path these links take through social networks.

Indiana University researchers are collecting the data, which will ultimately feed into a visualized dashboard. While Hoaxy is not built to definitively determine which content is verified versus “fake,” it does present related articles and content to provide more context and information.

This utility could be helpful to reporters and researchers who want to see where a story came from, how it was spread and if any contradictory perspectives exist on the web that might serve to debunk its content.

For example, one particular fake news site – designed to look like ABC News – shared a story about President Obama signing an executive order to ban the pledge of allegiance in schools. By entering the URL into Hoaxy, you will see the content debunked by two third-party sites (in orange). Below that, purple rows show the top spreaders of the news.

The same researches behind Hoaxy have been studying fake news for more than a decade, and a prior experience found that nearly three-fourths of people placed blind faith in content shared by their friends – even to the degree of sharing personal information on phishing sites shared within their close networks.

What’s more, they learned – even ten years ago – that fake news can drive ad revenue. In a test, the researchers placed ads on a fake news site that contained a disclaimer stating that the content above was completely false and meaningless. Despite this message, the team received continual earnings from the ads.